rror of the
ill-concerted and incongruous projects of faction, rather than
the organ of consistent and wholesome plans digested by common
councils, and modified by mutual interests. However combinations
or associations of the above description may now and then answer
popular ends, they are likely in the course of time and things
to become potent engines, by which cunning, ambitious, and
unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the
people, and to usurp to themselves the reins of government,
destroying afterwards the very engines which have lifted them to
unjust dominion.

16. Towards the preservation of your government, and the
permanency of your present happy state, it is requisite not only
that you speedily discountenance irregular oppositions to its
acknowledged authority, but also that you resist with care the
spirit of innovation upon its principles, however specious the
pretexts. One method of assault may be to effect in the forms of
the Constitution, alterations which impair the energy of the
system, and thus to undermine what cannot be directly
overthrown. In all the changes to which you may be invited,
remember that time and habit are at least as necessary to fix
the true character of governments as of other human
institutions; that experience is the surest standard by which to
test the real tendency of the existing constitution of a
country; that facility in changes upon the credit of mere
hypothesis and opinion exposes to perpetual change from the
endless variety of hypothesis and opinion; and remember,
especially, that for the efficient management of your common
interests, in a country so extensive as ours, a government of as
much vigor as is consistent with the perfect security of liberty
is indispensable. Liberty itself will find in such a
government, with powers properly distributed and adjusted, its
surest guardian. It is, indeed, little else than a name, where
the government is too feeble to withstand the enterprises of
faction, to confine each member of the society within the limits
prescribed by the laws, and to maintain all in the secure and
tranquil enjoyment of the rights of person and property.

17. I have already intimated to you the danger of parties in the
State, with particular reference to the founding of them on
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